Gundam SeeD: As I watch you sleeping
by Spiritblade
Summary: [ONE SHOT] Murrue finds Kira sleeping in the cockpit of the Strike and she wonders if dragging him into the war had been the right thing to do. [REPOSTED]


_**A Gundam SeeD fanfic: As I watch you sleeping**_

_**Written by Spiritblade**_

**_Disclaimer: _**Don't own it; never have, never ever. Will only borrow the characters. So don't fire that damn legal cannon in my direction. I'm gonna try for the Kira-Murrue pairing and give it my best shot. This is gonna be hard but here goes nothing...oh...I re-did this a second time as I was displeased with the first. Hope it sounds better than the first transcript.

The hangar of the Archangel was dark and silent, reminding the woman that strode within its confines of a cavernous tomb that had lain unviolated for millenias. Had it not been for the palpable hum of the battleship's plasma reactor, the silence within the hangar would have deafened her. It was during this rare moment of peace that it was this quiet. More often than not, it would be full of technicians rushing about as they hastily prepared the Strike and the Zero for battle.

She turned her head towards the area where the Strike was located, its titanic form looming in the darkness like a sleeping god. The slumbering machine god, piloted by one young Coordinator, was many things to many people.

To ZAFT, it was a military objective to be captured in order to deny its enemies a weapon to use against them.

To the EA, it was a weapon that would allow them to turn the tide of the Crimson Valentine war that had erupted preceeding the day when they sank Junius 7 and consigned over a quarter million people to the pyre.

To many factions, the Strike, like its siblings, was an instrument of war. But to the crew of the white-and-crimson Archangel, it was one of the guardian spirits that had seen to it that they had made it this far in a journey fraught with peril. Its brother spirit, the Mobile Armour Zero, slept nearby, its wings folded like a sleeping angel.

The pilot of the later, Major Mwu la Flagga, had retired, thanking God that they were out of ZAFT's reach for the first time in almost 3 months. Murrue Ramius, commander of the Archangel, could not blame him - nor the unanimous decision of her crew to go into torpor. Only a skeleton bridge crew and 3 technicians were awake, and these looked forward to their turn to hit the sack.

The only person she had not seen taking advantage of such a God-given opportunity to rest was the young man who piloted the Strike. No one, not even his friends, had seen him for the better part of the day. The last anybody saw of him was when he had been upgrading the Strike's OS, and that had been over 6 hours ago before the Archangel sailed into the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean.

Murrue looked at her watch. Ten minutes to midnight. Where was Kira anyway?

Murrue went up the engineering gantry leading to the Strike's cockpit. She had checked the mess room and sneaked a peek into his quarters earlier, only to find the the technicians on standby lounging there and the latter occupied by a slumbering Fllay. She had asked Kisaka if Kira was with Cagalli, but the second had shook his head.

This was the last place the young Coordinator could possibly be. If he was not there, Murrue was going to turn the Archangel back and scour every inch of earth and sea looking for him. When she peered into the Strike's steel womb, she breathed a sigh of relief. There, sleeping within, was Kira Yamato.

His lap-top rested on the main control panel, multiple wires extending from it to the Strike's I/O programming ports.It was clearly evident that he had worked himself to exhaustion. There was a weariness on his face that made him look older than his 16 years, yet at the same time, the soft blue light from the panels lit his gentle features in a fashion that took Murrue's breath away.

He was almost...angelic. She leaned in closer, careful not to lose her footing, studying his features, feeling the gentle warmth that radiated from him like a miasma. Even the soft touch of his breath on her skin conveyed a tenderness that caused Murrue to blush like a teenage girl all over again.

From a distance, Murrue would have mistook Kira for her first love, Darien Lionheart. They were so similar to each other in manner and temperament that Murrue had to arrest herself more than once before the latter's name left her lips. And just like him, Kira trod the same rocky path. She had been like them, once. Young and idealistic, believing she could make a difference by being path of the Earth Alliance, just as Kira believed that war was the worst possible madness.

But, Darien was already dead. He had died 5 years ago, and his dying act had been to throw Murrue into the nearest escape pod from the doomed battleship they had served on and sending her into the emptiness of space. His last words embodied a prayer voiced by those who have seen the madness of war, and who wanted it to end.

_**'I pray that this madness ends. Because if it doesn't...ours will be the hands that lay our children in the cold, bloodied earth, and ours will be the voice that consigns them to that fate. I can do no more...but perhaps, Murrue...perhaps you can change all that. I pray that God will have mercy on our race.'**_

A soft whimper from Kira's lips made her heart twist. Was she consigning Kira to that fate the day she took him and his friends hostage to ensure that they would not reveal what they have seen?

If so, she was responsible for his nightmares. What he saw in them, she did not know...but the fear that afflicted those who were in the trenches had the terrifying ability to follow those unfortunates into their dreams. And, like a vengeful ghost, haunt them long after they have left the battlefield.

Mwu had told her that even he sometime suffered from such nightmares, and when it did, the blonder major would have the look of one who had the life sucked right out of him. He had once said that having Kira piloting the Strike may well be one of the worst mistakes he had made, and that Natarle may have foreseen the pain it would have brought Kira when she contested their decision.

The guilt, Mwu added, was not hers alone. They needed every person who could fight and shake a gun at ZAFT in order to escape. Kira knew what he was in for the moment he accepted the burden of piloting the Strike. The alternative was, for the young Coordinator, a consequence he had no intention of seeing happen. No nightmare would be as horrifying as the one where he failed those he cared about.

Murrue took of her jacket and wrapped it around Kira. He did not stir, so deep was his slumber. This teenager - no, man - was not a storybook hero, even though the way he fought and acted made those long-faded legends real. She had forgotten those stories, having long outgrown them. But, now, when she gazed at him, they returned to whisper hauntingly in her mind.

And like the small girl she had once been before, the grown woman that had taken her place started to believe once more.

_**'You're not looking at a storybook character, Captain. He's real...and unlike those fairytale heroes you and I have read about, he is as imperfect as we are. You may have dragged him into this war, but he eventually made his choice to stand with you. Why? You are no less a friend than his schoolmates. If you need him to die for you, you have but to ask."**_

Lacus's words warmed and chilled Murrue at the same time. It held within them a stern - almost dire - warning not to abuse the trust that Kira had placed in her. Yet, at the same time, she felt awed that someone could believe in her that much.

_**"A boy? I hardly think so anymore, Captain. I look forward to seeing what he will be like in the future."**_

Natarle had smiled then. It was rare to see her smile, much less blush.

_**"Maybe the path he is on is the one WE should have trod long ago. Maybe then, the Bloody Valentine would never have happened in the first place. Maybe everything that had happened leading up to it would never have happend. I don't like having to say this, Murrue-chan, but he must see it for himself...he must see our mistakes."**_

Mwu la Flagga held high hopes, and Murrue could see that the blonde major was as proud of Kira as any man would be for his son. To think that a younger man could lead an older one on a path less taken spoke of the latter's faith in the former, and that the path he was taking was the right one.

_**"Baka. Idiot. Hot-head. He couldn't have said no, could he? You had to toss him in and ask him to clean ZAFT's clock, didn't you? But that's the way he is. So much so that I'm afraid for him. "**_

Cagalli had put into words what a majority of the crew abroad the ship had been unable to voice. The strain Kira had suffered ever since the Archangel fought its way out of Heliopolis had been tremendous, and the furious determination in his eyes had yet to dim. It was as if he was enjoying the war - something that had caused more than one of her crew-members to turn pale.

They didn't want this gentle, clumsy boy to become a hardened killer even as they needed him to be one so that they could remain alive.

Murrue sighed,_ 'Just a little while, longer, Kira-kun. Just a little while longer and you'll be home, safe and sound, in Orb. You've done more than I could have ever asked of you. If you and your friends don't get off at Onogoro, I will personally hog-tie and kick you off my ship.'_

She almost giggled at image of a protesting Kira, hog-tied, refusing to leave the ship with his friends. Murrue leaned into to cockpit once more, and gentle pressed a kiss to the still-slumbering Coordinator's forehead before departing the hangar bay for her quarters.

Once there, she took out a plastic container and pulled out an old drawing that her homeroom teacher had given to her over 10 years ago. The quality of the painting had been superb, and was almost so life-like in its shades and colours, that Murrue was surprised that her teacher had not considered making it a livelihood. She would have made millions.

The image of a young, robed knight wielding a fiery sword to a starlit heaven, surrounded by the faces of his compatriots - people she knew - stood out in stark relief. She could almost hear the thunderous symphony that echoed from the painting, sad and gentle, defiant and glorious. She could see fear and courage, hope and determination, love and hate in the faces there.

Can any human foretell the future?

Common sense would tell you no, and Murrue's mind refused to acknowledge that it may well have been fate that had drawn everyone in that very picture together. It was as if her High School teacher, Michiru by name, had seen the future and that the paintings that she may have given to every face in the painting Murrue now held was to give them some measure of strength in the trials to come.

_**"You will meet them in a Year of Fire, when the final moves of the game are being played out by men who believe themselves saviors. During a time when Man re-enacts an ancient sin believing it righteous and just, justice will become vengeance and loyalty shall become a shackle to unjust causes. There is no salvation in killing, nor do the damned ever forget.**_

_**"And when lost, one has no choice but to rely on oneself. No one has the right to be another's moral compass, especially when that person's compass is all but guided by his own hatred. Take into your hands, then, a sword of faith and pave a road to an era where blessed silence shall fall upon a thousand battlefields and where hate is finally drowned in sorrow.**_

_**"Victory cannot bring the stability that the world prays for, and cannot bequeath redemption to those who had made it so.**_

_**"Ah...but you shall be there. The journey will be fraught with pain and fear. You shall see stars that will burn bright in this time of darkness. You shall find the Forsaken Knight in the face of the one you have loved the most. He will light the way even as ancient ghosts come to haunt him. If men and women of rank and wisdom cannot see what their actions have wrought upon humanity as a whole, then it is up to those who believe in what children believe to lead them to it.**_

_**"The 3 maidens will guide the Forsaken Knight to his destiny, but upon you, dear Murrue, falls the greatest responsibility."**_

Murrue smiled, remembering her teacher's gentle gaze.

_**"You will show him the world and awaken him from his slumber. You, not the maidens, will be the first to confer your blessings upon him. And, should you wish it so, should you want to share that destiny...the blessing you give can become yours as well."**_

_**Fin.**_


End file.
